The present invention relates to a device for opening a film-like closure such as a cap or lid on a container, and more particularly to a film-like closure opener which can easily and quickly open a film-like cap or lid that closes the opening of a tubular container such as a blood collecting tube or the like.
Evacuated blood collecting tubes of glass or plastic are mainly used as blood sample containers in the biochemical examination of blood. Sampled blood is extracted from a blood collecting tube and examined by an automatic blood examining apparatus. Many automatic blood examining apparatus are constructed such that the blood collecting tube must be supplied thereto after the cap or lid of the blood collecting tube has been removed, thereby opening the tube. If the cap or lid is in the form of a rubber plug, a device for removing the rubber plug is used.
Recent years have seen the use of blood collecting tubes of plastic. The plastic blood collecting tubes have thin films which serve as closures such as caps or lids sealing the openings of the tubes. Such a film-like closure is kept taut over the open end of a blood collecting tube, thus closing and sealing the tube opening. The film-like closure cannot, however, be quickly peeled off manually since it is intimately bonded to a flange which defines the opening of the tube. There has not been developed any means for automatically peeling off such a film-like closure from a blood collecting tube.